Google has long grappled with data privacy gaffes and internal instability, but through it all the company has consistently improved the security and privacy of Android. Given, the operating system’s 2.5 billion users, that’s no small task. With the release of Android 10 in just a few few weeks, the new iteration of data and […]
Though there are other authentication dongles out there, YubiKeys are largely the face of the physical two-factor authentication movement. Unfortunately, to date it’s also been unavailable for the most high-profile smartphone in the world. But today manufacturer Yubico is releasing the first Lightning port YubiKey for use with iPhones and iPads. It’s been a long […]
In response to widespread pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, the Chinese government launched an online disinformation campaign casting the protesters as members of ISIS and cockroaches, according to disclosures made by Twitter and Facebook on Monday. Since the two social networks are blocked on mainland China, the propaganda efforts appear designed to influence perception of […]
At this point, Apple has locked iOS down enough that a full jailbreak—unlocking a device to install whatever you want on it—of current releases is extremely rare. When such a capability does exist, it’s usually kept quiet and sold for millions of dollars by exploit brokers. But now, thanks to an apparent Apple gaffe, the […]
This week, WIRED looked into the plight of Joseph Tartaro, a security researcher whose NULL vanity license plate at one point had him on the hook for $12,049 in fines. The problem? Apparently every time a traffic cop wrote a ticket and left the license plate blank, those citations headed straight for Tartaro’s mailbox, regardless […]
The tail end of the Defcon hacking conference this week saw a remote car-start dongle and app that could have been hacked to steal cars, along with a drone hacking a smart TV. Oh, also, researchers have found a way to decrypt ubiquitous GSM calls. And common devices all around us can have their speakers […]
Facebook doesn’t have the most stellar privacy and security track record, especially given that many of its notable gaffes were avoidable. But with billions of users and a gargantuan platform to defend, it’s not easy to catch every flaw in the company’s 100 million lines of code. So four years ago, Facebook engineers began building […]
Joseph Tartaro never meant to cause this much trouble. Especially for himself. In late 2016, Tartaro decided to get a vanity license plate. A security researcher by trade, he ticked down possibilities that related to his work: SEGFAULT, maybe, or something to do with vulnerabilities. Sifting through his options, he started typing “null pointer,” but […]
For months, systems administrators have been racing to patch their Windows systems against BlueKeep, a critical vulnerability in Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol that could enable a global, internet-chewing worm if not fixed across hundreds of thousands of vulnerable computers. That worm has yet to arrive. But now, Microsoft has reset the clock in that race, […]
Hacker summer camp is here again! You know what that means: WIRED is back in Las Vegas for the annual Black Hat and Defcon security conferences, where we’re digging into the latest and greatest hacks on display. First, let’s talk about iPhones. A researcher found it’s possible to break into one just by sending a […]